US says Israel was behind the drone attack on Iran

Unnamed U.S. officials on Sunday confirmed suspicions that Israel was behind the weekend drone attack on a purported military facility in the Iranian city of Isfahan, heightening concerns that the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is gearing up for a broader assault on Iran as international nuclear talks remain at a standstill.

The New York Times reported that the drone attack—which Iran says it mostly thwarted—was “the work of the Mossad, Israel’s premier intelligence agency, according to senior intelligence officials who were familiar with the dialogue between Israel and the United States about the incident.”

“American officials quickly sent out word on Sunday morning that the United States was not responsible for the attack,” the Times noted. “One official confirmed that it had been conducted by Israel but did not have details about the target.”

The Times added that the “facility that was struck on Saturday was in the middle of the city and did not appear to be nuclear-related.”

The Wall Street Journal also reported Sunday that Israel carried out the attack, which was launched hours before U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in the Middle East for planned trips to Israel, Egypt, and the occupied West Bank.

Last week, CIA Director William Burns made an unannounced trip to Israel to discuss “Iran and other regional issues,” according to the Journal.

Israel’s latest attack inside Iran’s borders came after negotiations aimed at bringing the U.S. back into the Iran nuclear accord—which former President Donald Trump violated in 2018—hit a wall. President Joe Biden told a rallygoer in November that the Iran deal “is dead, but we’re not gonna announce it.”

Israel’s spy agency has made clear that a newly negotiated nuclear accord would not stop its attacks on Iran.

“Even if a nuclear deal is signed, it will not give Iran immunity from the Mossad operations,” Mossad chief David Barnea said in September. “We won’t take part in this charade and we don’t close our eyes to the proven truth.”

Earlier this month, Netanyahu—a longtime Iran hawk who has been making false predictions about Tehran’s supposed nuclear bomb ambitions for years—vowed to “act powerfully and openly on the international level against the return to the nuclear agreement.”

In the absence of a nuclear agreement, the Journal reported Sunday that the U.S. and Israel are looking for “new ways to contain” Iran, which condemned the Saturday attack as “cowardly.”

Originally published at Commondreams.org.